For the next 20 minutes, they crush raw almonds into a fine paste, straining out a bottle of nut milk. Started in 2017, Yudhveer Akhada is a residential wrestling academy for girls, run by a family of competitive wrestlers in Sonipat, a semi-urban industrial town in Haryana, a province in northern India bordering Delhi. Every student who enters the academy has the same goal: to win an Olympic medal for India. “In India we are surrounded by the stories of violence against women,” said Prarthna Singh, the photographer on this story. “Within those patriarchal constructs, we have these academies where young women are carving out a space for themselves as sportswomen.

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